Do you have something fantastic to focus on and look forward to? Having a worthy goal is one way to rekindle your passion and stay positive…even amid negativity and challenges.
I frequently ask the audience members in my keynote presentation “How to Stay Positive and Focused in Uncertain Times” to contemplate and complete the phrase “Someday I will…” to help them identify a worthy goal.
Sometimes I even nudge them further by asking them to come up with one step they can take toward their “someday-I-will” goal.
When I recently asked my Facebook Friends to complete this same phrase, here are ten of the favorite responses I received. (Names have been replaced with initials.)
- “Someday I will swim with sharks.” J.M.
- “Someday I will stand in front of the pyramids of Giza.” N.S.
- “Someday I will travel the world.” T.C.
- “Someday I will reach the business goal I started 30 years ago.” C.C.T.
- “Someday I will climb a mountain and slide down it with my hands up.” Y.M.
- “Someday I will live in Paris.” P.R.
- “Someday I will change the world.” C.C.
- “Someday I will see the fulfillment of my dreams.” P.H.
- “Someday I will travel to meet the family of my great grandfather.” D.
- “Someday I will have enough resources to save the world from hunger.” R.L.
This phrase-completion activity reminds me of some of these popular quotes that similarly suggest the worthiness of creating what we want:
“It’s Not the Years in Your Life That Count. It’s the Life in Your Years.”
-Abraham Lincoln
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” -Maya Angelou
“Life isn’t about finding yourself; life is about creating yourself.”
-George Bernard Shaw
The million-dollar question is how do you move past the cliched “follow-your-dreams” declaration to accomplish your goal?
A great start would be becoming aware of possible obstacles so that you can move beyond them.
Here are a few of the roadblocks that can keep you stuck in a rut instead of moving forward:
- Perfectionism – We wait for the perfect time to take action and begin creating the life of our dreams. Unfortunately, there is no “perfect” time so we end up procrastinating indefinitely. Someone once said that waiting for the perfect time to begin something is like waiting for all the traffic lights to be green before we begin a trip. In that case, we would never leave our driveway!
- Trying to fix/control others – It’s easy to put the blame elsewhere as to why we can’t achieve what we want…and that also causes a whole lot of stress. Rather than doing what we need to do, or saying what we need to say to move forward, we point fingers at others. The “if-only-that-person-would…” rationale results in non-action and no accomplishments. To quote the iconic speaker Tony Robbins: “The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.”
- Too Many Priorities – Do you know those people who are simultaneously juggling so many projects that they aren’t accomplishing anything at all? Some people even justify their multi-tasking by saying they’re keeping their options open, or want to make sure they have a fallback plan. I loved this comment by actor Denzel Washington when he was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey: “People say you should have something to fall back on, but if I’m falling, I want to fall forward, not prepare to fall back.”
Spoiler alert: In my 2012 TEDx Talk “Communication Lessons Learned From Mom” I conclude by sharing the “woulda-coulda-shoulda” vibe I felt when going through my late mother’s home office and seeing some of the incomplete projects that would now never be completed.
In my call to action, I challenged my TEDx audience—and I challenge you—to answer these questions:
“What things do you need to do that you haven’t yet done?”
“What do you need to say that you haven’t yet said?”
These lyrics from a John Mayer song were my closing words at that Talk and I’ll close with them here as well:
“Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open,
Say what you need to say,
Say what you need to say…”
